Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
THIS DEAL IS NOW DEAD: As reported by DealsWeLike and a reader named Joe (see comments), the Aadvantage shopping mall is no longer offering 10 points per dollar for Sears’ purchases. However, for those with Chase rewards cards, the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal currently offers 10 extra points per dollar for Sears, Macy’s, and Kohl’s. Ultimate Rewards points cannot be transferred directly to Aadvantage miles, but if you’re shopping for Continental Airlines miles, Hyatt points, or several others, this might be a great opportunity. For more see my prior post 30,000 Continental Airlines miles for $2,000 Sears spend!
Last week I posted a way to earn 30,000 Continental Airlines miles by spending $2000 at Sears. Now, there’s an even better opportunity. Through the Aadvantage shopping mall, you can now (for a limited time) get 10 miles per dollar spent at Sears. On it’s own, that means that a $2000 spend at Sears would get you 20,000 AA miles. However, if you follow this plan, you can get 40,000 miles! 1. Browse to the Aadvantage Shopping Mall and find Sears. Currently, purchases from Sears via this portal are rewarded with 10 miles per dollar. Go to Sears from this portal and buy a e-gift card for $2000 (or whatever amount you need). Note that it may take an hour or so to receive your e-gift card. From this step alone, you will have earned 20,000 Aadvantage miles. 2. Return to the Aadvantage shopping mall and click through to Sears again. Find what you need and add it to your shopping cart. This step will earn you the additional 20,000 miles giving you a total of 40,000 miles for this purchase! But, wait, there’s still more bonus available: 3. Make sure you belong to Sears’ Shop Your Way Rewards program. When checking out of Sears.com, enter your Shop Your Way Rewards number. For your $2000, you will earn 20,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points! Don’t get too excited, though. Each point is only worth 1/10 of a penny. Still, that comes to $20 worth of points. You might as well take it.
|
|
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
I sent 3+ e-mails to AA eShopping –> nothing happened.
Still waiting for my 25K bonus miles!
Further follow up… miles posted to AA this morning exactly as described above. So in the end this bought me nearly 60k miles at around 1cpm which got me within a controllable margin of lifetime platinum
Best advice I can offer is be polite, concise, consistent and insistent. Use the “Contact Us” feature and they will say it will take x days to follow up (45 if I recall). Mark your calendar 45 days out. Write again saying that you have waited 45 days and still nothing. Use the Contact Us feature again. Keep a track of who replies to you. When you use Contact Us follow up with an email to customer service and that person. Request a read receipt.
Of course you also need to keep good records. Screenshots of the purchase etc. I use the toolbar as it shows a green light when you are earning miles – makes it easier to “prove” you were logged in. Not that any of this came up but having it just made it that much harder to deny.
SHOCK! WOW! After countless email chases, 58,822 miles are showing pending in my AA shopping account! This is great news. It has been a long hard fight and not one I would repeat but looks like it will finally work out. Also pleased to note the purchase date is showing correctly as 9/22 and these typically post to AA with a transaction date as of the purchase date. So I am 95% sure this will count towards million miler status. Which if true will get me to around 5k short of 2m and lifetime platinum on AA.
So looks like this one will work out in the end for me, but only after a lot of chasing
p.s. FWIW the credit card charge back failed. Citi said that because I had received the items I had ordered they could not accept. I argued i had not received the miles and that was part of the order but no dice. I somehow can’t help feeling Chase or Amex would have sided more with me. I have had other issues with Citi cards and they are going to the bottom of the pile as a result
Phil: That’s awesome! I am so happy to hear that!
Phil or Gabe: any suggestions to others for how to get Cartera to pay up?
Wow, Can Gabe showed me the tricks for Cartera & AA Exec? I sent numerous e-mails to eShopping (no response) & AA (one response saying will investogate) and still no responses for my 25000 miles.
My e-mails must go to worker bee levels only.
Thanks!
Wahoo!! After sending my 10th email to Cartera and cc’ing a few AA exec’s, I received an email today stating that the 40,000 miles would be posted to my AA account within 2 weeks.
Gabe: Great!!!
Well I really wish it had not come to this but I have now submitted a dispute with the credit card company. I tried contacting Sears customer service and got no response at all. I have tried contacting Cartera and have had some limited response. So frankly I was getting a bit p**sed at all of them.
Phil: Yikes. Best of luck.
I’ve waited the requisite 45 days and then submitted a missing miles request through AAshopping. Not holding my breath…
Al: Good luck. Let us know how it turns out!
I submitted a dispute on 11/4 and received the following response:
“We received your receipt and this information has been forwarded to our research department. It takes 2-6 weeks for a research request to be completed. After the research process is completed, you will receive an update via email.”
It has been 2 weeks and no response yet. I am wondering if they are delaying the posting of the miles so they don’t count toward lifetime status.
I was in for $4k in gift cards which I redeemed most at K-mart for other gift cards including about $2k for Ebay. I’ve started a vicious cycle by buying more Sears/K-Mart gift cards on ebay at a ~5% discount plus 1% in ebay bucks and will continue to “churn” this as long as its allowed.
Gabe, sorry to hear about the lifetime status thing. Hopefully they’ll back-date the miles for you. On the other hand, that’s really cool about how you’re churning the gift cards! It sounds like you have a nice perpetual point machine going! I didn’t know that you can use gift cards at Kmart to buy other gift cards. I assume that you have to do that in person? Regarding buying gift cards on EBay, do you have any tips on how to avoid gift card scams? I’ve read about people selling gift cards, but keeping the gift card #s so that they could clear them out before they are used.
Sent e-mail to AA EShopping to advise them I will dispute with my CC for not posting miles for this purchase. Probably will not receive any feedback till 11/15.
Peter: good idea. Please let us know how that turns out.
Any luck for your Sears.com purchase?
I haven’t received any credit yet from Aadvantage Shopping. Anyone else?
Al, It does not show up. My Brooks Brothers purchase didn’t show up until it posted, FWIW.
Hi Gabe, does your sears gc purchase show up on the “My Recent Purchases” tab on the left side of the eshopping site? Mine does not. I expected to have seen it show up there by now.
Al, it doesn’t show up for me either. I sent a request to them to confirm my purchases on Monday, but haven’t heard a peep back yet.
Update: I put in a request to the Aadvantage shopping mall support and received an unhelpful response. Basically, “don’t bother us until 45 days have gone by”. I bought Sears gift cards on Sept 19, so it will be into November before they will be willing to investigate.
Has anybody received miles for this yet? or even seen the purchase on the “my recent purchases” link at AAdvantage e-shopping site? I’m starting to wonder if this was a bad idea…
I have not received my miles from the sears gc purchase I made on Sept 19. However I have received miles from a Brooks Brother purchase on Sept 23. I’ll give it another week before I contact AA.
Sadly, the Sears miles are back down to 2/$
Thanks Joe. I’ll update this post
Did anybody see the gift card tab from the eShopping site? It say 3 miles per dollar. Sounds like a risky proposition trying to get 10 per.
How To Earn
Earn AAdvantage® miles with every gift card purchase made through the AAdvantage eShoppingSM mall. A reward for giving, what a great idea!
3 miles per dollar
Gift Certificate
Al, thanks for keeping us on our toes! However, the 3 miles per dollar offer is from a different merchant, giftcards.com, not from Sears. While its true that I haven’t yet received 10 miles per dollar buying gift cards through this portal, I have received 10 points per dollar buying Sears gift cards through the Chase UltimateRewards mall. So, while it is unproven, there is at least some history to indicate that it will probably work.
Thanks FrequentMiler, I may take a chance and buy a few gift cards, If is doesn’t work, I’ll accept 3 miles/dollars as a consolation prize